


and i’ll build a house inside of you

by jontinf



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, References to Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-10
Updated: 2013-07-10
Packaged: 2017-12-18 09:03:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/878051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jontinf/pseuds/jontinf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It wasn’t very healthy, haunting the people you’ve watched die.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and i’ll build a house inside of you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [withkissesfour](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=withkissesfour).



> For my superheroine and friend, Lo. Thank you for waiting so long for this unforgivably belated birthday gift.
> 
> Special thanks to Piper and E for their feedback and support.

 *

They'd let the TARDIS take them wherever she wanted, quiet places, peaceable worlds which knew nothing of weeping angels and New York City, places with good memories and old friends that tempered grief and impulses for revenge and the even stronger impulses to visit her parents in the years which they lived.

It wasn’t very healthy, haunting the people you’ve watched die.

River did as she was told and looked after him, which was just as well. She wasn’t the type to feel sorry for herself.

She wasn’t completely immune either. The scent of her mother’s perfume once followed her a millennia into the future, a grimy, chipped bottle of Petrichor found preserved during an excavation. To her students, it was an artifact from a long gone age of humanity, but to her, it was Leadworth, seeing her parents fall in love, and running back home to them years later to share all the secrets she had to tell.

She buried the bottle at the bottom of her bag and found the Doctor only a few decades back, tinkering with some tricksy wire under the TARDIS console, muttering under his breath _you always do this on purpose_.  He stopped mid-syllable when he sensed River’s presence. Not meeting his gaze, she told him to put his arms around her. In those exact words. He was usually slow to catch on, or so she thought, but he knew on occasions like these, looking at her with a wrenching alliance of remorse and sympathy.

He did as he was told, and he took care of her in return.

*

They didn’t exactly choose when their travels would become less quiet. Quiet never suited them much anyway.

A furious horde of Pollinian cavalry tried to chase them out of town, a terrifying looking species, large red-faced creatures of snaking ligament and sharp-toothed snarls.

The Doctor, of course, deemed them fantastically beautiful, worthy of any postcard. She imagined her long-suffering father finding such a thing in the post amongst the very mundane lot of bills and car magazines.

As they swiftly turned a corner, the Doctor asked exasperatedly, though not with the least bit of surprise, “What did you do _now_?”

 _The nerve of him,_ she thought. She wasn't the only troublemaker in this marriage _._

(He was right in this specific case, _but still._ )

“Something about unpaid library fines, I suppose," she said. "The Pollinians are sticklers for those sorts of things.”

She peered from behind a wall to assess the situation, her blaster in hand. She could take the entire front row if the man of the house didn’t get in the way. “Granted, it _has_  been at least 700 years. You’d think they’d have forgotten by now.”

The Doctor leaned close and flipped open his screwdriver, ready for action in what felt like ages. “And how could anyone forget you, River?”

*

They lived apart for mostly mental health reasons. There were also the cosmos saving demands of archeology in the 51st century and the similar demands of his proud, deliberate, and aimless existence in any century.

They managed to keep in touch and _in touch_.

Sometimes when one is catching up with someone who is living on another planet and time period, the lines can get crossed, and one finds herself in a state of undress with a pleasantly surprised Jack Harkness staring back at her on the screen.

Nobody could say that Captain Jack ever failed to ask the Doctor about his wife.

The interest was gladly mutual.

*

They were stuck babysitting a Silurian toddler. A favor for a friend of a friend of a once-nemesis of a famous space Mafioso he met in a flower shop.

“That sort of thing." The Doctor shrugged as he told her. River was livid. She didn’t do babies. Babies and weddings. He knew that.

“Don’t worry I—”

“—speak baby, _I know_. But does the baby speak idiot?”

She actually didn’t say idiot, but something much, much ruder and untranslatable in any human language. Gallifreyans had the most creative and oddest combination of obscenities.

“That doesn’t even make sense!” he said, covering Danny’s ears.

Danny was what the Doctor decided the baby would like to be called. His real name sounded like a Pokemon.

It _would_ be a lie if she said she never thought about children and the Doctor. Children _with_  the Doctor. One might say there was a sense of urgency since they were the last two time lords (well, time lord-lite on her part, but dead civilizations can’t be choosers).

They were also the _very_ last two time lords who should ever be responsible for repopulating an entire race, let alone caring for children—even the word _repopulate_ had a certain sticky undertone to it.

In the end, she was sad to see the Sirulian baby go. He’d grown on her, as all little green things tend to do, with his ruthlessness and terrific sense of humor. The Doctor used him to flirt with her, said things he might have not said to her face otherwise ( _What’s that, Danny? River’s the most exquisite thing you’ve ever seen?_ ).

Danny also unceremoniously puked into the Doctor’s new trapper hat _, bless him_. Having recently watched _Fargo_ for the first time, there was no talking him out of wearing it, even when she insisted that it made him look like a pelican.

*

She had to quit her job when word got out that _Professor Song had time lord genes_.

Well, actually.

She had to flee from her job. It’s not as fun when your own colleagues start to look at you as a living prehistorical artifact instead of someone who studied them.

It was a slapdash escape, both a little drunk from an office party that had gotten out of hand. Literally, somebody lost a hand.

The Doctor snapped his fingers as they attempted to climb out of her office window with her haphazardly packed luggage plonking behind them, mostly full of underwear, weapons, liquor, and an old bottle of perfume, what River liked to call the essentials.

The doors of the TARDIS opened for them instantaneously. Looking back to see if she was impressed (she was), he told some anecdote about a woman named Donna Noble. River made a mental note to ask more about _her_ later.

“Sweetie, that Dalek girl friend of yours would have come in handy at a time like this.” River snuck a not-too-quick glance at his backside as he climbed into the Tardis. “Any evidence of time lord heritage would have been erased with a simple press of a button.”

The Doctor turned around, blushing and indignant, and reached out to pull her in with him.

“She wasn’t my girlfriend.” He sounded like a stroppy eight-year-old boy. To think he was talking about the finer points of Gallifreyan quantum mechanics just moments ago _—_ which _was_ how they got into this mess in the first place.

River let herself fall on top of him, her hair and belongings toppling everywhere, knee landing exactly where she wanted it. She could practically feel the TARDIS roll her eyes.

They always got like this after he broke her out of something.

“I didn’t say she was your _girlfriend_ …” she teased, her lips hovering over his, a finger hooking itself under one of his braces and slowly sliding down toward his trousers. She felt his chest rise firmly against hers as his breathing slowed, all the while smiling irreverently. “…but interesting reaction.”

She gave him a chaste kiss on the nose, ruffled his hair, and climbed off, leaving him on the floor by himself.

*

The worst fight they ever had was after she mentioned taking a job for the Felman Lux Corporation.

Jobs, _real_ _jobs_ , were hard to come by the more infamous you were, even with the vanquishing of certain enemies and criminal records. Felman Lux only happened through a bit of forgery and psychic paper.

Every sound was seemingly swept out of the room when she told him, and all that was left was the look on his face, how he couldn’t even look at her, so furious she almost feared that he’d decided right then that he no longer loved her. But then his jaw clenched, eyes darting, ready for a fight he knew he wasn’t supposed to have, everything about him somehow desperate and frustrated and _sad_.

He forbid the whole thing in twenty different ways of saying it but completely unwilling to explain anything. She thought he’d lost his wits and laughed at him. Surely, he was kidding.

“ _Because I told you_ ,” he gritted, finally looking at her across the console.

She lost her temper. _He had no right_.

The thing about shouting matches with the Doctor was that they were rare and short-lived. He had trouble staying angry, even when he was in the middle of an argument, even when his wife had just slapped him clear across the face because he had said the words, “ _I have every right_.”

Both of them were stricken and apologized over each other. She hated it when he let himself look guilty. It reminded her of all the things she wanted to blame him for. She stormed off the ship, or rather, in a blistering flash of light, had her vortex manipulator tear her as far away in time and space from him as it could take her. She wouldn’t have been able to bear it if he’d been the first to leave.

_Let him follow her across the universe for once._

_*_

He found her sitting on a sea cliff in Orkney. It took him a day, which was impressive timing, considering all he had to work from were hunches and absolutely no graffiti.

Sitting down next to her, he bumped shoulders. “Fancy finding you here, Doctor Song.”

Her fingers clutched the ground’s edge. For her, she’d last seen him ten minutes ago and they were still fighting.

“I don’t think you could ever know what it’s like to love you." She let his fingers slip heavy and cold between hers. “What it’s been like, living each day knowing that I’d be the one to end your life.”

The Doctor smiled, that kind, sad, timeworn smile of his. “You’d be surprised.”

River looked at him, the wind beating tendrils of hair against the line of her jaw, only surprised that he’d say that, and he once more had the look of someone who had said too much.

“Nothing surprises me." She smiled back, but with a cruel, challenging glint lingering in her eyes. “I once tried to end it all, you know? Thinking it’d save you.”

His face fell, quieted and defeated, and she realized it brought her no pleasure to hurt him. The Doctor looked out onto the sea, the profile of his face suddenly delicate and handsome.

“River,” he whispered.

“Kovarian would go to any lengths to protect her little science project, and—”

“—I love you.”

“Bastard,” she breathed, happily outraged. “First time you say it, and it’s like this.”

She’d steeped the sound of those words into her lungs, thought if she never breathed again, it’d last forever. His face grew serious, so serious she wanted to resist taking him seriously, wanted him to break into some dopey grin, twiddle his fingers, and bring them back to normalcy.

“I mean it,” he insisted, again solemnly, “and I mean it when I say that I’m sorry.” _For everything that was and will be._

River studied his face, amazed. “What’s gotten into you?”

“Nothing.” The Doctor shook his head and faintly smiled into his lap. “I remembered something you told me in the future, and I should respect it,” he sighed, looking her over “…and I also hate you for it.”

Her fingers carefully traced the lines around his mouth, her thumb on his lips, his face bowed into her palm, a truce being struck at last at the edge of the world.

River answered warmly, like a habit, “No, you don’t.”

*

They had many adventures in the year before The Library. They made an Ood laugh, met Lorna Bucket in the Gamma Forests, solved a murder mystery with Strax, Jenny and Vastra, inspired a song by Nat King Cole, and danced with flapper women in the Jazz Age.

Their last spring together was spent in the 51st century. River, ever the enterprising archaeologist, found out the Doctor’s birthday, his real birthday, and took him on a picnic in Rome.

His bare feet in her lap, her back against a garden wall, River regaled him about the new crew she’d assembled, and he proudly listened on and blinked back any other possible emotion within himself.

He was wearing the new purple bowtie that she’d given him. It had come with a fez to match, letting bygones be bygones.

“Were you always missing that bit of your toe, sweetie?”

“What?” The Doctor propped himself up on his elbows and squinted over the bridge of his nose, taking this as an opportunity to wiggle his toes. “Oh. No, it was—don’t you remember? Jim the Fish and the clown stars. Genghis Khan.”

So many of their adventures sounded like a terribly wonderful, confusing dream.

“Genghis Khan?”

“You really don’t remember?”

“Must not have lived it yet.”

“Good." The Doctor beamed but then stole a glance at the blue book peeking out of her bag like a bad omen.

She peered at him suspiciously, thinking that he was teasing her, and tickled his feet.

“Blimey!” he shouted as she grabbed hold of his ankle as though she were holding it for ransom.

“Are you going to tell me why that bit of your toe didn’t regenerate?”

He tipped his head and grinned. “You’ll have to find out.”

“Oh, will I?” She pushed his feet off her lap, which made him laugh in a way she hadn’t heard in some time. “Well, I like it.”

“That I’m missing a part of my foot?”

She lay down next to him and pillowed her head on his chest.

“No,” she told him, dreamily searching the sky with Mels’s mischief in her voice, “that it wasn’t supposed to happen.”

*

But then there was always rule number one: the Doctor lies. Especially to himself. (Time can be re-written). And he didn’t always do as he was told.

He tried everything, gangers, the Teselecta, stopping the Vashta Nerada from infecting The Library in the first place. He even crossed into his own timeline, sneaking into The Library as himself, by himself, accomplishing nothing except watching it happen all over again and being saved by a young woman in the shadows when he wasn’t looking.

There were so many lies he let himself believe until finally accepting the immovable, unremitting fixed point that was his wife’s final act of heroic self-sacrifice. His hearts shattered the morning he gave her his screwdriver.

He had grown far too tired and bitter and had lost far too much to lie to himself anymore.

*

When he took her to Darillium, there was a kind of heaviness and finality to his every sound and gesture, wet eyes and long fond stares and mouth coiling to make him seem almost as old as he really was—which River usually understood as a sign that either he or she or the both of them were going to veer off into oblivion.

She took her own mortality for granted to the point that death at most intrigued her but certainly not frighten her. (Not like it did him. Even when he knew all along, especially when he knew all along).

They made love after the Singing Towers, though not for the last time. He pressed his lips against her bare shoulder, still and wistful against her skin, eyes widely staring out at nothing. She idly wrapped the fabric of his bowtie around her hand, a smile for an old memory playing on her lips.

She told him he looked handsome in his new suit and handsome without it as well.  He managed a choked up kind of laugh, and his arm slipped under the blanket and squeezed her waist a little bit tighter.

He was so terrible at keeping secrets.

River considered the possibility that he was regenerating, whether at any moment he’d combust into quintillion jolts of light and bio-energy right in front of her. Selfishly, she wondered whether the new person would love her as much as the man lying next to her. She knew not to dwell, on how much someone like the Doctor could love her back, on whether that love was enough to withstand a regeneration—regenerations, she recalled, that she’d given him.

Perhaps, in that way, she’d always be with him, be a part of him.

He loved her now, that she knew for certain, more than he loved anything else in the universes.

That would have to be enough.

**Author's Note:**

> The song The Doctor and River inspired is Nat King Cole's "Stardust," which I thought was rather apt for them in the end in its loveliness and poignancy.


End file.
